This book has been sitting in my bookcase for almost ten years. I started it several times over the years, and I always seemed to lose interest about 50 pages in. This time, I was determined to finish, and I’m glad I did.
Bitter Grounds is the story of several families in El Salvador – rich and poor, their fortunes all revolve around the country’s main export, coffee.
The story spans several decades, from the 30s to the late 70s. It begins in 1933, when Mercedes Prieto and her daughter Jacinta come across the headless body of a member of the National Guard. The next 24 hours see their lives change irrevocably, as they lose their home and much of their family in a massacre – the government’s attempt to quash an uprising by plantation workers, who are demanding better conditions.
Over the years, Mercedes and Jacinta find their lives intertwined with those of the wealthy Contreras and Tobar families. Jacinta and Magda Tobar raise their daughters, Maria Mercedes and Florencia, together. The tale of the two girls occupies most of the last third of the novel, as Flor and Maria Mercedes take two very divergent paths in life – Flor marries into a wealthy family and has children, and Maria Mercedes joins a revolutionary group.
Benitez’s style is sometimes very formal, and the book often felt to me as if it were a translation, rather than written in English – and I think this, more than anything – is what kept me from finishing it a decade ago. In some ways I found it to be the standard “family epic”, spanning decades and great historical events, told through the eyes of “regular people” whose lives are intertwined in remarkable ways (and often end in tragedy). She gives equal time to the story of Jacinta and her mother, Mercedes; to the story of Jacinta and Benito, grown and working for the Tobars; and to Maria Mercedes and Flor, the rich girl and the servant’s daughter. The lives of the rich and poor women often mirror each other closely – both suffer deep losses, have children, make sacrifices on similar timelines.
At any rate, what often kept me reading was the account of the unrest in El Salvador, and how it affected both rich and poor. Novels have such an amazing capacity to open windows (doors, whatever) to stories from history, and Bitter Grounds, which won the National Book Award in 1996, tells a story many of us have forgotten or never knew in the first place.